Sunday, May 7th @Braves on Peacock/NBC

[eddie83]

Some of these swings by both sides makes we wonder if they aren’t picking ball up well. 

[Can_of_corn]

4 minutes ago, tntoriole said:

Exactly 

I don't follow.

You still don't learn to hit ML pitching in the minors.

[Tony-OH]

3 minutes ago, Moshagge3 said:

Stowers giving the lineup nothing.

Here's the thing with Stowers. He can be awful 2 or 3 at bats and then hit a 420 foot home run in that fourth at bat. He's definitely a guy that will look very bad at the plate at times. then again, he always hit left-handers better than right-handers in his career but Hyde refuse to bat him against left-handers after the 5th inning.

[Moshagge3]

2 minutes ago, Tony-OH said:

2nd and 3rd with no one out and they get a ground out RBI. That's it. This team really struggles to hit with RISP. Again, I get it, Eldred is a good, but everyone is trying to pull everything. 

McCann hit it very hard.

[OriolesMagic83]

Wells is outpitching Eldred, but bats need to come thru w/ all the opportunities they've had.

[LA2]

3 minutes ago, Tony-OH said:

They need him to change his approach with two strikes. He can't be in "I need to be able to drive the ball" mode with two strikes. The guy is an awful two-strike hitter and unfortunately, he takes a lot of strikes and fouls off a lot of pitches and ends up in two strike counts way too often.

He could learn something from Frazier or Urias in that regard.

[spiritof66]

42 minutes ago, Tony-OH said:

I would be very surprised. First, it's in the bloodstream for the Angelos family to ensure they can always make a profit so they are not going to risk someone crashing. Two, Elias has shown no appetite for taking on risk. None. He doesn't move top prospects for need. He doesn't sign pitchers for more than a season. He has shown no interest in taking on risk with long term contracts.

 

I've said this before. Elias has done a good job, overall, drafting and acquiring position-player and relief pitching talent, and in putting a good, .500ish team on the field at a very low cost. But he appears to have no plan in place for putting together a good starting rotation. There are two obvious ways to do that: signing high-level free agents to costly, long-term contracts, and trading some of the excess position-player talent in the system. (The first may not, as a practical matter, be available to him, though he's spoken as though it is or may be.) 

Both those options are things in which Elias has zero experience, so far as I can tell. Maybe more important, both are fraught with risk. You might trade guys like Ortiz or Cowers or Stowers and they become stars elsewhere, while the front-line pitcher you traded for or signed gets hurt after a season or just loses effectiveness well before his contract is up. I think Elias is scared to make a high-risk move that might go south and spoil his now-solid reputation. He has to understand that a new owner may bring in a new GM or might have a falling out with current or future ownership, leaving him to look for another GM job. It's also possible that John Angelos wants him to avoid a big move to maximize the options that the next owner will have to build a starting pitching staff.

Maybe that's too pessimistic, and Elias will make a big move or two shortly after John Angelos has that meeting in which he shares ownership and financial information with the media.

[Moshagge3]

Ump has screwed Wells out of two strikeouts now.

[LA2]

Bye! Go Os!

[Tony-OH]

1 minute ago, Can_of_corn said:

I don't follow.

You still don't learn to hit ML pitching in the minors.

You where you continued argument fails on merit? Actually, a lot of Triple-A pitchers do have major league stuff. They may lack command or consistency, or make too many mistakes in the middle of the plate, but it's not like the pitching is awful there. 

And besides, you are not supposed to be developing at the major league level if the team believes they are a contender. I'm not ready to say Gunnar needs to go back to the minors yet, but we're probably a week or two from him needing to improve or he may be sent back for a bit.

[Mooreisbetter27]

Just now, Moshagge3 said:

Ump has screwed Wells out of two strikeouts now.

Yup. 

[dtk9119]

Good grief had him 0 2 and lost it vs a .150 hitter

[Gurgi]

Watch Wells give up a home run now.  Just our kind of luck

[Gurgi]

Just now, Gurgi said:

Watch Wells give up a home run now.  Just our kind of luck

So happy to be wrong.....god that was too close.

[Mooreisbetter27]

Just now, dtk9119 said:

Good grief had him 0 2 and lost it vs a .150 hitter

Shoulda been struck out those. 
 

Cripes that was close.